15 ESPN Fantasy Football Sleepers

Steve is an Emmy winning and 5-time Emmy nominated sports reporter who has covered the NFL, Final Four, BCS National Championship, Sugar Bowl and Kentucky Derby. Steve most recently covered the Indianapolis Colts and launched the fantasy football coverage at Colts.com, including DFS advice and statistics.

For the past few seasons, I have looked at John Paulsen’s rankings here on 4for4 and put them side-by-side with average draft position (ADP) data from each of the major sites that host our beloved fantasy football leagues.

That would take many hours to come up with who are the best values and sleepers on the actual sites we play on, instead of just using the overall ADP of a player across all sites.

But this season, there is a fantastic new tool we have unveiled for 4for4 subscribers—the ADP Bargains (Sleepers) tool. It can be found under the Tools heading in the menu above, then under Draft tools.

It essentially takes what I used to do manually and organizes it into a nice table that gets updated throughout the draft season with the latest ADP data from the site you use for your leagues.

Just change the settings to how many QBs, RBs, WRs, and TEs you draft, mark whether you play in standard or PPR, and choose where your league is hosted.

Today, we’re going to study who the best PPR league values and standard league values are for those who play in ESPN leagues, with the default lineup settings of 2RB, 2WR, 1TE, and a FLEX (RB/WR/TE). That means we’ll adjust the ADP Bargains tool to 2.3, 2.3, and 1.3 for each of those positions, respectively.

PPR League Values on ESPN

This shocked me because the biggest values that show up in this study are usually depth/sleeper options who may be going undrafted. In this case, it’s quite the opposite. Stafford is being drafted near the round 9-10 turn of ESPN leagues, and we have him ranked as a top-10 quarterback. It seems the late-round quarterback strategy might already have moved into the mainstream. Nevertheless, Stafford is a great value here.

Trubisky is being selected in ESPN leagues at the round 13-14 turn, which creates some value. By our top-200 projections, he should be going two rounds earlier than that. He may only be our No. 19 ranked quarterback, but it’s important to note just now deep the position is this season. The difference between our QB10 and Trubisky is less than 10 points over the course of the season, based on our projections. There’s a lot to like about Trubisky’s improved coaching staff, similar to what Sean McVay did for Jared Goff a year ago.

In the first two weeks of the preseason, Powell has played 24 of 27 first quarter snaps, and five of his 13 routes have come split out wide, per Pro Football Focus. He's being drafted in the 16th round of ESPN leagues, but he's a top 40 RB in our PPR rankings. That means he's being drafted more than seven rounds later than he should be right now and has the highest Bargain Score of any player in ESPN PPR leagues.

Only Hines has a larger bargain score than Burkhead. Among starting RB options, Rex Burkhead provides the most value on ESPN. His ADP in the 10th round on this site is more than six rounds of value, considering we have him ranked in the top 40 overall as a solid RB2 in a potent offense. Cash in on the discount for Burkhead and build a strong corp of RBs.

People are forgetting Thompson was an RB1 in PPR on a per game basis last season in the 10 games he played. The presence of rookie Derrius Guice is creating that memory lapse; however, his passing-down role seems safe, considering how much he excelled in it. Thompson is being drafted on ESPN almost four rounds later than he should be in PPR leagues near the round 8-9 turn.